


Conjugated to the Infinite Order

by metonomia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-14
Updated: 2010-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:12:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonomia/pseuds/metonomia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of the world, Dean leads in sorrow and Castiel leads in obedience.  AU from about the middle of Swan Song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conjugated to the Infinite Order

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Castielfest on LJ, for ladyyueh's prompt 'Remember in 4x7, where Castiel says he has to follow Dean's orders? Let's take that to the next level, Castiel becomes Dean's right hand, and General of the angelic Host that is to march against Lucifer's forces.'

"If Hamaliel and Maion take their troop to New York and Ramiel joins my force at the Four Corners then we will be able to keep the West from being taken and protect our stores in the East simultaneously." Castiel moves pieces on the Thomas Guide pages spread out as a war map, a sword here, a star there, a Monopoly thimble floating up the Colorado River.

"I'll leave Chuck with you so that you are able to determine where to send others as they are needed...Dean? Dean, do you approve of this plan?"

"Yeah, yeah, that's great, Cas." It's all great these days. Friggin' fantastic. A+ war effort. Plan after plan and all Dean wants to do is drive to the hole in the ground where the Lawrence house used to stand and bury himself in it. No more lists of the dead, midnight requiems and dawn reports. No more of Cas frowning at him like he is now, full of stern disapproval that Dean can't even pretend to be invested in the fight anymore. He tries to pull himself together. He really does, and it would probably fool anyone except Cas.

"It's a good plan, Cas. And Charoum's still got the Dayton base covered? Another caravan of refugees is due this week, and I don't want their protection lowered."

"Yes."

"Good. And your guys need anything? More swords?"

"At last report every member of the Host has a sword ready for them, and there are spares in case of last minute necessity. The Choir leaders will have control of that to ensure no soldier is left unprepared."

"Okay then. Go kick some demon ass." Dean slumps back as Cas disappears with the usual silent whisper and stares at the map once more. All of America reduced to maybe nine strategic points and an army of half-fallen angels fighting for humanity's right to keep it. He picks up the toy car that represents his own position and drives himself from Chicago to Palo Alto.

"I can go anywhere," he sings under his breath. Sammy loved the Reading Rainbow.

"Sammy's not here," he tells the empty room, and drops the car back on Chicago before going to find Chuck. Just Dean and Cas, and Lucifer somewhere out there laughing at them with Sam's voice.

+

"How are you doing, Dean?" Cas asks somewhere east of Lawrence.

"How do you think?" Dean mutters at the steering wheel.

Cas gets that look that means he wants to feel sorrier than he can. Dean hates the sudden real understanding in the angel's eyes, the shared loss, and the horrible purpose. He glares at the spot above Cas' head where Sam's face should be.

"My superiors are concerned that your ability to defeat Lucifer might have been compromised by...recent events."

"Maybe it was."

"Dean." He hates this, too, the regained power in Cas' voice, the guilt, and the castigation. There is no time for mourning at the end of the world.

"Dean, the stakes are the same. It's still Lucifer, even if -"

"Even if he's nestled all snug in Sam, dreaming of sugar-plums and world destruction with my brother's head? No, it's not the same."

"Michael is gone, Dean. You have to finish this."

"I can't kill Sammy."

"But you have to kill Lucifer."

"Why me? Why _me_, Cas? If Michael couldn't do it, why do you think I can?"

"You are still Michael's sword, a weapon even without a wielder. You were made to do this."

"And you and all your choir buddies weren't?"

"I was made to help you. To do my Father's will, which is to help you save the world."

"Then get me an army. What are all the angels doing anyway? Sitting around gossiping about the Apocalypse? Crying over Michael? Why don't any of them come to help?"

"The Host is engaged already -"

"If you're here to help me, and if I'm going to kill Lucifer, give me an army. Your precious Host can do some of its own dirty work for once." Castiel says nothing, and Dean turns back to the road, counting streetlights and ignoring the weight of the angel's stare. He speeds into Missouri, and Cas is gone.

+

Castiel is not a leader. He feels this in the clean light of battle, the simplicity of the chaos, the whispered cries as his brothers and sisters flash out of existence in his mind. He yearns for these moments of cold clarity, the sword an extension of his heavenly body, pure action and pure faith. This is what Castiel has always been best at, what he was made for - to do, to follow, to fulfill. Dean told him to get an army, and he obeyed. Easy. Now he leads that army against Hell and sometimes Heaven. Difficult. Impossible, except that it is what must be done.

He fights, abomination bowing like wheat as he cuts a path through it, and he is just one more laborer in the field of battle, but all too soon it is over and he can no longer vanish into the anonymity of the Host. He seeks the limits of Jimmy Novak's body once more and slides into it, pouring himself into bone and vein and pale, cold skin. His army settles into their own vessels, no longer swords but mere bodies, chipped and bloodied by their work. The angels heal their vessels and depart for their own garrisons, and the humans go stumbling back to the other surviving humans. They've been forging tentative ties among their camps, the last remnants of humanity, utter strangers and yet necessarily family in a world that is now the battlefield of angels and demons. Castiel does not pity them. With their service as swords they are able to engage in the fight for their own home. And not every sword stands back up, because with every inch won back for the human family, more of Cas' brothers and sisters fall.

+

"Is Jimmy still in there?" Dean asks after hearing Castiel's reports.

"No. If I were to leave the vessel, there would be nothing alive in this body." This discomforts Dean, as do all their discussions of vessels.

"So you got this idiot to loan you his body and you repay him by kicking him out of it?"

"This body has remained functional for much longer than it would have had Jimmy Novak not consented to be my sword. The virus would have reached him before it was contained. No one from Pontiac survived."

"But you didn't save him. Jimmy Novak isn't there anymore. For all you know you killed him before his time."

"And through his sacrifice some of mankind may be saved."

"So what's going to happen to all your other swords? Are they going to win the world back and then drop dead when the angels run home?"

"Some of them, yes."

"It's an invasion of the fucking body snatchers, dude."

"Invasion is a strong word to use about those whom you demanded come to aid you in your thus far fruitless war."

"It's not my war," Dean says. "I never asked for this, I never wanted this."

"Yet you did ask for the Host to aid you." There is no blame; Castiel was sent by his Father to follow Dean, and he has followed. He follows. He will follow. And they will succeed.

+

Jimmy Novak's body rips along the edge of a demon knife and Cas dances out of the way before any of him can be bled from the vessel. He exorcises the offending demon quickly, knife to throat and hand to forehead, then allows himself to step back for a moment. Lucifer is not here; that much has been apparent for some minutes now. Dean's standing orders are _get to Lucifer and ice the son of a bitch_ \- phrasing Cas would have once taken exception to but which is so simply Dean that he cannot - _and if he's not there, send as many demons as possible back to the pit_. Castiel suspects that Dean will, in the end, be the one to kill Lucifer, but he also knows that unlike Dean, he could kill his brother if he got the opportunity.

This is not that time, in any case, and Cas throws himself back into the mass of bodies, aiming towards a particular knot of demons threatening to overcome one of his Orders. The angels look up with human gratitude as he pulls demon vessels away from them and he can only nod in helpless authority before flying towards the next conflict.

+

"Why are you fighting for us?" Dean asks him, and Castiel has no true answer.

"Because you are our Father's creation and this is your world," he says. _Because you ordered me to do so. Because you have your free will but we do not even have destiny. Only obedience._


End file.
